TCP Limitation Models

Mathis Equation

The Mathis equation states that, for a small loss rate (less than 1%), the maximum achievable throughput of a TCP connection is limited by:

Rate <= (MSS/RTT)*(1 / sqrt{p})

where MSS is Maximum Segement Size
RTT is Round Trip Time as measured by TCP
p is the probability of packet loss

Padhye et al Equation

(Extract from Les Cottrell's 'Throughput versus loss')
An improved form of the above formula that takes into account the TCP initial retransmit timer and the Maximum TCP window size, and is generally more accurate for larger (> 2%) packet losses, can be found in: . The formula is given below (derived from eqn 31 of Padhye et. al.):.

We have assumed the number of packets acknowledged by a received ACK is 2 (this is b in the Padhye et. al. formula 31)
wmax is the maximum congestion window size
w{p} = (2/3)(1 + sqrt{3*((1-p)/p) + 1} from eqn. 13 of Padhye et. al. substituting b=2

If you are tuning your hosts for best performance then also read Enabling High Performance Data Transfers on Hosts and TCP Tuning Guide for Distributed Application on Wide Area Networks. Also The TCP-Friendly Website summarizes some recent work on congestion control for non-TCP based applications in particular for congestion control schemes that maintain the arrival rate to at most some constant over the square root of the packet loss rate.